San Diego City Attorney secures 100th restraining order to remove guns from people who pose significant threat

About a year after it started seeking gun violence restraining orders, the San Diego City Attorney’s Office said Thursday it has secured 100 such orders, which let authorities take firearms from people found to pose a threat.

Fourteen of the cases involved people who made threats of violence at work or in school. Ten involved people — juveniles and adults — who used social media to make threats.

Eighteen of the people ordered to give up weapons had mental health issues, including dementia and post-traumatic stress disorder. And more than one-third of the cases were linked to domestic violence or stalking, according to the City Attorney’s Office.

“It’s hard to know how many lives we’ve saved by removing firearms from unstable, irresponsible, and dangerous gun owners,” City Attorney Mara Elliott said in a statement released Thursday.

“But San Diego continues to rank among America’s safest big cities, in part, because its leaders take seriously our responsibility to recognize red flags and prevent predictable gun violence.”

In January 2016, state law changed to allow family members, roommates and law enforcement officers to ask a court to remove access to firearms and ammunition for people who pose significant danger to themselves or others.

The restraining orders require the gun owners to surrender or sell the firearms, and bar them from having guns or ammunition for a year.

In San Diego, the first such order was granted on Jan. 3, 2018.

Since then, the office said Thursday, 269 guns — including more than a dozen rifles — as well as thousands of rounds of ammunition had been confiscated or surrendered as a result of the orders.

Twenty of the restraining orders were obtained within the last month, the office said.

Among those recently ordered to give up a weapon and bullets was a man who had threatened to kill his ex-girlfriend — they had dated three months — and her family, according to Elliott's office.

The man also had repeatedly showed up at the victim’s home in the early morning hours, incessantly ringing her doorbell, officials said. The victim believed the man had been using methamphetamine when he made the death threats.

Elliott’s office has said she made the program a priority after she came to office at the end of 2016.

City prosecutors worked with San Diego police and court officials. By the end of 2017, the City Attorney’s Office launched its gun violence restraining order program.

San Diego city police and prosecutors have also teamed up to train other agencies in the state on how to obtain gun violence restraining orders.